Elvic
Elvic The Elvic people refers to an ethno-lingusitic group composed of the Nesarians (except the Cortathians), Eshérians, Avamorians, High Elves and Black Elves. The now-extinct Vampires and Dark Elves were also part of this group. The original Elvic language is known as Proto-Elvic, which split off into several different groups. The Elvic group is unique for being made up of several different races, namely Humans and the Elfkin. The Elvic languages are part of the Divenelvic language family, made up of two main branches - the Elvic and the Divenoric. The Divenoric languages include the Divenic and Avamoric languages. The exact origin of Proto-Divenelvic is unknown, but the most popular theory is that it was devised in a society made up of both Elves and Humans who went their separate ways after the Annihilation that ended the Age of Titans, with the Humans carrying on with the Divenoric languages and the Elves carrying on with the Elvic languages. Since then, the Divenoric and Elvic languages have strongly diverged. The Elvic languages are gramatically very similar to English, and are centred around a system of suffixes to change the meaning of words. They have very regular and strict pronunciation rules, with languages derived from Eshérian generally having stricter rules, as well as harder and sharper sounds. The Nesarian language was created during the Eshérian Invasion, when the Eshérians taught their language and civilisation to the native Nesarians. It shares many similarities with Eshérian, having the same grammar, but many words were melded with native words, and some native words still exist in their original form. Northern and Southern Nesarians to begin with had separate but similar languages, but with the domination of Ascaria over Nesaria, Southern Nesarian became more integrated and eventually nothing more than a dialect. The Elvic people all share the same religion, which is Elveta, with the exception of the extinct Dark Elves who followed a kind of animistic religion which there is little knowledge of today. Language groups All the Elvic languages derive from Proto-Elvic, but this soon split into various sub-groups. The first split occurred when the Black Elves and Dark Elves migrated to different homelands (or perhaps the Elves and Vampires migrated away from the Black Elves and Dark Elves - it is not known), and over time their languages diverged, so strongly that modern Black Elvish is difficult to recognise as being at all related to the other modern Elvic languages. The language of the Elves and Vampires carried on as Old Elvic. It is thought that Old Eshérian, Old Elvish and Vampiric were originally merely dialects of Old Elvic before the Eshérian Invasion, when the Eshérians migrated to Nesaria, quickly followed by the Vampires. At this point they clearly diverged into different languages. Old Eshérian melded with the native Nesarian languages to form the Nesarian language. It also changed itself, developing harder and somewhat harsher sounds, and losing the system of vowel harmony for the suffixes that existed in Old Elvic and was carried on by Old Elvish. Whether or not the Eshérian language still exists or whether it is merely a dialect of Nesarian is a matter of heated debate, but whatever it is, it has always had a fairly high degree of mutual intelligibility with Nesarian. While Eshérian was becoming harsher, the sounds of Old Elvish were becoming softer. The language carried on in the Elvish Archipelago as High Elvish (with many different dialects arising from centuries of being split between the islands), but in the Avamorian colonies a new language arose after interaction with the native Avamoric languages, developing slightly different pronunciation and many new words. Besides these new words, High Elvish and Avamorian are mutually intelligible. Differences between Old Elvish and Old Eshérian While the languages derived from Old Elvish and Old Eshérian can seem similar at first glance, they have different pronunciation rules for words that can be spelt the same way. For the sake of simplicity, those languages derived from Old Elvish will be simply referred to as "Elvish" and those derived from Old Eshérian will simply be referred to as "Eshérian". In terms of grammar and structure, the Elvish and Eshérian branches are essentially identical, with one key difference in that the Elvish branch maintains a system of vowel harmony with the suffixes whereas the Eshérian branch does not. As sounds and syllables shifted over time, the Elvish branch diverged significantly from the original Old Elvic, whereas the Eshérian branch remained much closer to Old Elvic. Although sound shifts certainly occurred in the Eshérian branch, these were the only aspects of the words that remained unchanged, however whole words have changed completely in many cases in the Elvish branch. The pronunciaton differences are as follows: * "AE" is pronounced "ai" in Eshérian but "ei" in Elvish * "C" is always pronounced as a hard "k" in Eshérian, but if it immediately follows a consonant it is "ch" in Elvish * "CC" is pronounced "ch" in Elvish, this sound does not exist in Eshérian * Although historically "Q" was always an "x" (the "ch" sound in "loch") in all the languages, in Standard Nesarian it is a hard "k" * Generally speaking, wherever there is a "v" in Eshérian, the corresponding Elvish letter is "f"